Danny and Michael Philippou discuss their demonic debut ‘Talk To Me’
Over the past few years, YouTube has seen a growing number of its users transition into the world of feature filmmaking. From Dan Trachtenberg, who went on to make 10 Cloverfield Lane, Bo Burnham’s sensational Eighth Grade, to Swedish director David Sandberg who adapted his own short film, Lights Out – the online platform is yielding an increasing number of talented, contemporary filmmakers. The most recent exports are the filmmaking brothers Danny & Michael Philippou, known more commonly by their YouTube channel, RackaRacka.
With over six million subscribers and a near decade-long presence, the RackaRacka duo are bonafide YouTube veterans. A brief glimpse at their videos shows that they’ve consistently generated exciting, innovative and engaging content throughout their career, ranging from your standard talking-to-the-camera fare to outrageous and endearing DIY shorts (often featuring a version of Ronald McDonald). Quite rightly, they have millions upon millions of dedicated, passionate fans.
Having just released Talk To Me, the debut feature from Danny and Michael, they have delivered a bold, audacious and downright terrifying horror about possession that played to rave reviews at Sundance and subsequently got picked up by modern-horror pioneers A24. As first films go, the RackaRacka boys have hit an absolute home run. Far Out sat down with the Australian brothers to discuss the transition from YouTube, how the internet honed their skills, and how medical drug trials played a key role in their success.
Far Out: What is it about YouTube that encourages such creativity? Did it feel like a natural transition for you to go from YouTube to making a feature film?
Michael: “Yeah, it was always the main goal. And I think a lot of those people, who are transitioning, got into YouTube with film as their main goal. It’s like an awesome platform – if it was readily available to all those sick directors from the 1980s and 1990s, probably even back to the ’60s, I think all of them would have used YouTube. You can build your own audience and access so many people immediately – it’s an awesome way to hone your skills and craft”.
Danny: “We didn’t start on YouTube wanting to be YouTubers. We wanted to be filmmakers. The YouTube stuff took off quite quickly, so we did end up becoming YouTubers – we love the world so much, and it’s so fun and fast, and you can get that instant satisfaction of uploading and seeing growth, so we really got swept up into it. But the overall goal was always filmmaking and film”.
What are the immediate differences between the two?
Michael: “It’s like the boxing equivalent of a YouTube video being a jab and a feature film being a heavy swing when you’re putting everything into it. It’s much more rewarding, on a much bigger scale – and it’s a massive collaborative effort, from the production designers to the cinematographers to producers. All these creative people put all their energy into one big project – there’s nothing like it”.
Danny: “Instead of a YouTube audience giving feedback, it’s script editors, producers, and the co-writer we work with. When we went to the premiere, we had no idea what people would think of it. It’s so different to our YouTube stuff – what people were expecting and what it actually is may have been very different. We didn’t know what the reaction would be; we just made the film that we thought was good and that we loved”.
Were there any existing collaborators that you brought over?
Michael: “Oh yeah, from our YouTube stuff, there was our make-up girl, Rebecca Buratto, who had always done our stuff for free and working on the Racka videos, so when we got the film, we were like to our producer, ‘We need her to be our head make-up artist’, and they let us bring her over and make her head of department, which was awesome”.
Danny: “Even crew – since pre-YouTube, we used to do crewing on films, and a lot of people who crewed on Talk To Me were people we’d worked with before, and we had relationships with a lot of them. It was like making a film with a bunch of friends. Having a producer who put the film first was so integral to everything”.
Michael: “Some producers put the film’s finance before the creative, whereas our producers always put the creative first. They were amazing”.
How did A24 get involved?
Michael: “A24 distributed it, and we made the film independently in Australia”.
Danny: “We made it with Causeway Films; they produced it. Then it got into Sundance [Film Festival], and A24 bought the rights to distribute Talk To Me from Sundance”.
A24 is the bastion of good, cool, modern horror. How did that feel when they came knocking and said, ‘Yeah we’re going to take it and push it around the world’?
Danny: “It was so insane; we couldn’t believe that they were interested. We used to joke on the set every day, like ‘It’s pretty ‘A24′, this shot’ – we used to joke about being picked up by A24. We even joked about Sundance, not believing we could accomplish it. And then the fact that we got into Sundance and picked up by A24 is so surreal. It’s unbelievable”.
Back to YouTube – was there one point where you realised you could make a career out of it?
Michael: “When it first took off, we refused to monetise because we were like ‘We’re not in this for the money’. But when we got to a million subscribers and were broke, we decided it could help us make more videos”.
Danny: “Within the first year, we realised we could make a career out of it. My job at the time was just medical drug trialling, so I’d check in at the hospital for like two months at a time, and they’d test a drug on me that wasn’t on the market yet. They didn’t know what the side effects were – that was my job”.
You were one of those guys! I’ve known people like that.
Michael: “[To Danny] You’re one of those freaks, are ya?”
Danny: “[Laughing] And then I’d always write when I was in there. I bought my first camera with that money; there are plenty of our early videos shot on that. I couldn’t hold down a normal job, so that was my ‘work’ initially, and then the YouTube stuff took off, and we started getting brand offers and stuff like that – in the first year. We realised we could actually make a living off of this. It was awesome”.
How did the idea of Talk To Me come about, and what was the writing process like?
Danny: “We had so many different projects that we were trying to get made, stuff we were writing that wasn’t getting anywhere. We had a coming-of-age thing that we were pretty far into, we had a full draft, but at that time, we were so caught up in the YouTube stuff that we didn’t really give the time and love to the project that we needed to. And then, around 2018, 2019, we felt finally ready. YouTube was demonetising a lot of our videos, so we felt like we had to find a way to express ourselves more freely. We started taking writing way more seriously. Then a producer sent us a short film for a horror comedy about kids having fun with possessions, so I took that and inserted characters that I really connected with and changed it to be a bit more serious… and then once I started writing, I couldn’t stop”.
Did your YouTube status help open doors regarding approaching production companies etc?
Danny: “No, not really”.
Michael: “There’s a weird stigma that comes with being a YouTuber when you’re trying to do stuff outside of YouTube. It’s kind of like, ‘Yeah, you’re a YouTuber, but you’re not a filmmaker.’ Stay in the YouTube queue!”
Danny: “But then there’s also these weird examples of big companies trying to make films with YouTubers that don’t want to be in film or aren’t interested in film – generating really mediocre ‘YouTube films’.”
There’s a very defined modern strand of horror nowadays. Do you see yourself staying in that space?
Michael: “We don’t wanna just stay in horror. We’ve got a romantic comedy that we’ve written. There are different genres we want to go into. For now – I think the next film we’ll do will be a horror, but action is a big thing we love. We want to do a good action film”.
Danny: “I want to do a horror, Michael wants to do an action”.
Michael: “Oh, you don’t want to do an action?”
Danny: “I’m just saying, I would rather do a horror next than an action”.
Michael: “No, I know that we’re doing a horror next, but later down the line…”
[They both laugh]
Danny: “This is when we start getting upset”.
Talk To Me is available in cinemas now.
